Thread by @JYSexton

In Kenosha and Portland we're seeing Trumpism evolve into its next form: fascistic sectarian violence.

We need to recognize the threat, how we got here, and the history of America we don't talk about.

This is part of my upcoming book AMERICAN RULE.

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penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611439/a…

The truth is, as a country, many of us have been in active denial about what Trumpism is and the threat it poses. Many have continued to believe we're immune to sectarian, genocidal violence and fascism.

But we aren't. It's here. Knocking on our door

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themuckrake.com/main/sectarian

These "Trump caravans" represent a new step on our descent into fascistic violence. They're garish and ridiculous, but they resemble other moments in our history and world history where people start invading communities, committing violence, and murdering "others."

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Already we've seen The Right begin to openly embrace extralegal, paramilitary murders. This was inevitable. They flirted with this in the past, but this open acceptance tells us something: they're going all the way with this.

They're not going to hold back anymore.

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Before we dive into history and America's disgusting legacy of sectarian violence and white paranoia, we first must state this.

Trumpism is fascism personified. It is a weaponized paranoia and mythologization of the past for political power. We must see it for what it is.

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People have been in denial about Trumpism being fascism, but it's very clear. And with fascism you have a rise of sectarian conflicts, paranoid appeals, and widespread violence.

This is where we are, on the precipice.

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To begin this conversation, we must go back to the very beginning, where wealthy founders designed a new government to protect themselves from uprisings and to further their power and wealth.

To do so, they had to appeal to Southern slaveholding states for solidarity.

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To win over Southern states, the Founders gave them outsized representation in the Electoral College and through the 3/5's compromise. This ensured the South would have virtual control over the government for generations.

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In the 19th century, the balance of power that the South had enjoyed began to change as the country grew. They realized they would not hold a majority and reacted in anger.

There were riots, beatings, duels. They began embracing anti-democratic means to maintain.

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Americans began fighting among themselves as well, particularly in the West, where pro-slave/anti-slave forces carried out sectarian violence and a pre-civil war conflict in Bleeding Kansas.

They viewed each other as enemies instead of fellow citizens.

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With the efforts of abolitionists like John Brown, Southerners believed there was a massive conspiracy against them.

There wasn't. At all. But the conspiracy gave them motivation to secede and form their own nation and murder their fellow citizens with impunity.

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The founding of the Confederate States of America was based on a rejection of democratic institutions as they were losing their advantage and a completely paranoid conspiracy-filled worldview that had little relationship with reality.

It was much like where we are now.

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The Confederates believed they were "real Americans" and that Northerners had betrayed the founding and American principles.

Because they saw themselves as removed, and the North as "others," their violence and behavior was legitimized and appropriate.

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The Civil War was sectarian violence on a massive scale. More than half a million Americans died, all because of conspiracy theories, white supremacist paranoia, and the myth of the other.

It was authoritarian and proto-fascistic, the results of a country torn apart.

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The conspiracy theories didn't stop there though. The Confederacy survived the Civil War as white supremacists continued to peddle their paranoia and racism.

The ideas of the Confederacy continued to propagate and hold back progress and equality.

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In response to these unfounded conspiracy theories, paramilitary groups in the South, including the KKK, began killing African Americans and anyone wanting to help them, as a "defense" against their paranoid delusions.

This continued for so long and took so many lives.

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Later, the Confederate conspiracies took on a new focus and tone as white supremacists hailed the founding of the Soviet Union as a new threat.

They believed Russia would manipulate people of color into destroying America, a threat that required violence en masse.

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This new conspiracy theory held that any protest movement or organization that helped people of color had to be the work of communists, and thus a terrorist threat.

This was embraced by white supremacists everywhere, including politicians and our media.

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Early in the 20th century, the conspiracy theory that communists were manipulating people of color led to massive oppression, lynchings, murders, riots, blood in the streets.

Again, they saw Americans as the enemy, as needing to be dealt with as terrorists.

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Instead of trucks, they put on hoods and marched through American cities. The KKK resurrected, gained many more followers, took over entire states. They would go into towns seeking to mete out violence and oppress people of color, their "enemies."

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In places like Tulsa, they didn't bother to wear masks or hoods because law enforcement joined in on the violence.

They burned businesses, homes, murdered people of color in the streets. They marched in, marched out, all of it a caravan of white supremacist violence.

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Later, the white supremacist paranoia took on a new tone as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was pushed by men like Henry Ford and adopted by fascist Adolf Hitler.

America and the Third Reich were deeply intertwined, their philosophies shockingly similar.

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We have hidden our relationship to fascism because to investigate it closely reveals an America riddled with white supremacy and fascistic philosophy.

It is a stained history of preemptive, paranoid sectarian violence and genocide. We must understand it to understand now.

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Of course, that fascistic, white supremacist paranoia survived the fall of the Third Reich and infected America well after World War II.

The Civil Rights Movement was viewed as a communist plot, its protesters as terrorists deserving violence and death.

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Protesters were met with violence, beaten, murdered, treated like terrorists by their fellow Americans because of white supremacist paranoia and the appeal of sectarian violence.

We glaze over this. We romanticize the moment. We don't recognize what actually happened.

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Similarly, the anti-war movement was met with Right Wing extremism. Americans took to the streets and beat and brutalized protesters, often with the approval of leaders like Richard Nixon.

There were bombings. Murders. Chaos. All because of conspiracy theories.

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Any examination of our current moment would be incomplete without looking at the influence of The Right, including the usage of white-identity evangelicalism, and the construction of a paranoid, alternate reality where the GOP and the wealthy could consolidate power.

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The basis for this modern paranoid movement is the New World Order conspiracy theory, which is a retelling of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion which claims liberals are involved in an anti-American conspiracy.

It's the same story, over and over again.

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In the 1990's, after the fall of the USSR, The Right, including the GOP and NRA, used the New World Order to foment new white supremacist paranoia to win elections, gain followers, and raise a ton of money.

It was a continuation, but a rebranding of past paranoia.

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The newest and most dangerous development has been the establishment of Right Wing media that echoes the conspiracy theories and frames the world in a continually updating paranoid frame.

It is a highly destructive invention and has warped our reality.

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The message is simple. There are "Real Americans" and traitors. The Real Americans are under attack, their lives and families could be destroyed any day if the New World Order and liberals have their way.

This not only gets votes, but radicalizes believers.

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In this alternate reality, leaders people disagree with are turned into dictators, sleeper agents for Muslim plots, New World Order takeovers, their very existence proof that at any moment jackbooted thugs might take your family and kill them.

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The wealthy and powerful see the advantage of this alternate reality and have used it to their advantage, including the creation of the Tea Party movement, a completely made-up, paranoid scam that pushed America right and drowned it in conspiracy theories.

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Likewise, Donald Trump has profited off this alternate reality, telling a dwindling base that they are actually the majority and that they are under attack.

It's yet another grift that radicalizes its believers, ensures electoral power, and leads to advantageous violence.

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The new iteration of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and New World Order conspiracy theories is the Deep State.

It's just a different coat of paint, but it's the same Us vs. Them paranoid fever dream white supremacists have always used to their advantage.

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These conspiracy theories activate true believers who consider themselves soldiers in an invisible army.

After all, their lives and the lives of their loved ones are at stake. The conspiracy is coming for them. Their violence is legitimized by the paranoia.

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The opposition is turned into terrorists. The situation is clear-cut: kill or be killed.

We've been taught this in the era of endless wars, in the war against terrorism, in the destruction of our Constitution in the name of "national security."

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More and more, just like the Tea Party, the Right is sinking into more and more ludicrous, dangerous conspiracy theories.

They call for preemptive violence and extralegal measures to prevent the conspiracies from killing innocent people.

It grows and grows and grows.

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The environment becomes ripe for extremists, for more invisible soldiers to coalesce and carry on their paranoid war.

Suddenly, they're in legislatures. The streets. At polling places. This has happened in one country after another. It's happened here. Now, we're back.

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These caravans look suspiciously like other movements in other countries, not to mention the same bands of paranoid white supremacists who rolled into Tulsa and other cities to dole out mob and sectarian violence.

It's a new step, an escalation, in this crisis.

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We're in denial because America is cloaked in the myth of exceptionalism. People believe we're immune to fascism because of stories and myths. They believe it couldn't happen here.

It already has. And it's happening again, only in a more concentrated way.

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We must recognize the threat. That's the first step to stopping it. Disabusing ourselves of these myths and learning our actual history

This crisis is escalating daily. The Right will continue to consolidate power and radicalizing. We must reject this before it's too late

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